Afro Am 133: Afro-American History, Civil War to 1954Afro Am 170/171: The Multicultural Experience in American Life and CultureAfro Am 188: Introduction to African American LiteratureAfro Am 290c/753: The BluesAfro Am 331: The Life and Writings of W.E.B. Du BoisAfro Am 365: Composition: Style and Organization (Junior Year Writing)Afro Am 491C: Cuba: A Social History Afro Am 605/History 797S: African Americans and the Movement to Abolish SlaveryAfro Am 652/234: Literature of the Harlem RenaissanceAfro Am 691C: Historiographical Methods in Afro-American StudiesAfro Am 692G: African American Women's NarrativeEnglish 891BB: African American Women Playwrights
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 UMass Amherst Libraries Home  »  Subject Research Guides Home  »  Afro American Studies

Afro American Studies  Tags: afro_american african_american black_studies  

A general guide to library research in Afro American Studies.
Last update: Nov 16th, 2009 URL: http://guides.library.umass.edu/afroam  Print Guide  RSS Updates

Afro Am 365: Composition: Style and Organization (Junior Year Writing)             Print Page
  
 

Journals

Why journals?

Academic journals are great for browsing and keeping up to date.

They give you an idea of what scholars in African American Studies are writing about today (and in the past if you go to the back issues).

They also give you an idea of how scholars in African American Studies write.

The following are some top scholarly, academic journals.

African American Review  PS173.N4N36 and online

Black Collegian  LC2781.B45 and online

Black Issues in Higher Education  LC2781.B455 and online

The Black Scholar E185.5.B5 and Microfilm A 831 and online

Callaloo PS173.N4C3 and online

Contributions in Black Studies HT1581.A2 C6 and online through ScholarWorks

The Journal of African American History E185.J86 and online

Journal of Black Studies E185.5.J8 and online

Journal of Blacks in Higher Education LC2781.J68 and online

The Review of Black Political Economy E185.5.R45 and online

Souls: a Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society E185.5.S68 and online

 

 

Organize Citations/Create Bibliographies

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1. Set up your account by clicking on the link above or the RefWorks link on the library homepage. Click on "New to RefWorks? - Sign up for an Individual Account." Note: You get to choose your own username and password - make them easy to remember!

2. Get your journal article citations into RefWorks
Most databases have a way to export citations into RefWorks directly. If you can't find the export link after you run a search, see instructions for the specific databases.

3. Get your book citations into RefWorks
Books from the UMass Catalog

  1. Within RefWorks, go to the search menu on the left side top and choose "Online Catalog or database"
  2. In the next screen, under "Online Catalog or Database to Search" choose "University of Massachusetts Amherst." If you have a specific title or author, go to the advanced search at the bottom and run your search.
  3. Your results will appear in a separate window or tab. choose the title(s) you want to import to your RefWorks account and click on "Import."

Books from WorldCat (combined U.S. library catalogs, includes UMass)

  1. Go to www.worldcat.org
  2. Conduct a search.
  3. Click “Export to RefWorks” in the “Subjects” line at the bottom of the gray box.
  4. Log into RefWorks.

If you need more help or info on RefWorks, check out the FAQs.
 
 

Writing & Research

Library Guide for Afro Am 365 - Composition: Style and Organization (Junior Year Writing)

Good library research makes you a better writer.

 

Reference sources

TIP

Reference books are great as a starting point in your research and for getting basic facts on your topic.

Located in the Learning Commons, on the Lower Level of the W.E.B. Du Bois Library.

The African-American Almanac REF E185.5 .N34

African American Women: a Biographical Dictionary REF E 185.96 .A45 1993

Africana: the Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience REF DT 14 .A37435 1999

Biographical Dictionary of Afro-American and African Musicians REF ML105 .67

Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History REF E 185 .E54 1996

The Encyclopedia of Civil Rights in America REF E 185.61 .E544 1998

The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz REF ML102.J3 N48 2002 (3 vols)

Notable Black American Women REF E 185.96 .N68 1992

Notable Black American Men REF E 185.86 .N68 1999

Statistical Record of Black America REF E185.5 .S83

 

Books in Afro American Studies

 

    Search for books from Library Catalog, linked at www.library.umass.edu.

    SEARCH TIPS

    -->When searching for information about a person, search with the last name first
    -->    Best to be as specific as possible. (e.g. Holiday, Billie) Best to write out full name if you have an acronym (e.g. National Basketball Association instead of NBA)
    -->    Use broad categories to browse for sub-topics or to limit (by date, words in subject or words in title) for more focussed results.
    -->     Subject searches are often more focussed than keyword searches. But when a subject search doesn't work, try a keyword search.
    -->If our copy is out or if UMass doesn't have enough books on your topic, check the Five Colleges Catalog.You can connect to the Five College Catalog directly from our catalog and request Five College books online!


Sample subject searches (based on actual topics of students between 2003-2007)

African American athletes

African American basketball players

Athletes, Black

Black Power

Black Power - United States

Baraka, Imamu Amiri

Capital punishment

Discrimination in capital punishment

Discrimination in criminal justice administration

Family Violence

Family Violence -- Cross Cultural Studies

Genocide

Hate Crimes

Hip Hop

Jazz

Jazz musicians

Lee, Spike

National Basketball Association -- History

Slaves' Writings, American

Marsalis, Wynton

Winfrey, Oprah

If UMass doesn't have books on your topic, or if our copy is checked out:

Five Colleges Library Catalog

WorldCat for searching other catalogs if you don't find books in the Five College System. Borrow books using the Interlibrary Loan service.

 

We order for you - for free!

Use your Interlibrary Loan account to:

  • Borrow books, videos, and other materials not available in the Five College system.
  • Request electronic copies of articles and book chapters not available at UMass.
  • In databases, and in your Refworks account, use the button to  taken directly to Interlibrary Loan, so you can order articles if UMass does not have them.

 
 

Databases

Why databases?

Databases help you efficiently find good scholarly journal articles on your chosen topic.

Tips for Databases:

  1. At a minimum, search Black Studies Center, Academic Search Premier, America: History and Life, and Web of Science.
  2. From off-campus locations, an OIT Computer Account is required to access licensed databases.
  3. Use the Database Searching Log to keep track of your searches and search strategies.
  4. Use RefWorks to manage your citations and create your bibliography.
  5. After you've run a search, use the button (if the database has it) to retrieve articles.

The following databases, are recommended for Afro Am topics:

Academic Search Premier - (includes full-text journal articles) Good for scholarly journal articles. Tip: For scholarly articles, limit the search to Scholarly (Peer Reviewed) Journals in the front search screen

African American Biographical Database - A source for information on 19th and early 20th century African American lives and culture, from a digitized collection of books published 1790-1950.

African American Newspapers - Seven nineteenth-century African American newspapers in full text, including advertising, 1827-1902.

African American Song - 16,000 tracks of historical recordings of jazz, blues, gospel and other genres, 1890's-1970's.

America: History and Life - Scholarly article citations in American history with some full text links.

Biography Resource Center - Biographies of thousands of important people.

Black Studies Center combines several resources for research in Black Studies: Schomburg Studies on the Black Experience, International Index to Black Periodicals (IIBP), The Chicago Defender, and the Black Literature Index. IIBP provided indexing and abstracting of 150 African, American and Caribbean periodicals, with full text of forty core journals. The Chicago Defender was at one point the most widely-read black newspaper in the country, with more than two thirds of its readership based outside Chicago.

Black Thought and Culture - Collection of books and other monographs, essays, articles, speeches, and interviews written by leaders and writers within the African American community from 1700s to 1975.

Black Women Writers - A growing collection of literary works by about 77 African, African American, and Afro-Caribbean women.

Book Review Digest - Great for book reviews.

ERIC - Articles and reports dealing with issues in education.

Ethnic Newswatch - Full-text articles from the newspapers, magazines and some scholarly journals of ethnic communities in the United States.

JSTOR - Full text scholarly articles in many fields.

Lexis-Nexis - News section contains hundreds of newspapers from all over the world. Most of the articles are not scholarly. (full text)

New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians

Sociological Abstracts - Scholarly article citations in sociology with some full text links.

 

 
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